as musicians our ears tell us what we are playing and communicating the aural feedback is of paramount importance.
i recently heard amember mention 360 degrees in reference to acoustic piano playback I never heard this concept before so there is much to learn in this area.


I myself , amd I am sure others have not regarded this aspect of my setup as serious as some of you better informed on this forum

perhaps you can share your experience with headphones

monitors or sound systems theatre systems etc.

for my purposes I use my sound system to transcribe music, so I need to hear every instrument in the mix.

I recently procured HEAR which is a type of sound enhancer .I find this make s everything I play through the system sound better.. the best headphones I ever owned were sony md700's

and my monitors are samson resolv

i am sure not the best sound set up

I'll take a crack at this. Maybe someone can help me out if I make a mistake.

We only have two ears and the piano only has two outs, so it would seem that you can only get as much of a soundstage as can be defined by the differences between the sound coming in one ear and the other. In actuality this is not true because we hear not only with our ears but with the skull behind our ears and other parts of our head and somehow our body uses this information to construct a more vivid soundstage. Headphones not only send sound to our eardrums but if they are circumaural send some sound behind our ears, etc. and it's not just the same sound as goes into our eardrum. This information is used by our brain to create what feels like a 360 musical experience.

You can't get the same experience out of two speakers easily in my experience. That's why we have surround sound in some cases (not generally in digital pianos, though). If you read headphone forums they are always talking about "soundstage." This is what they are referring to.

To be fair, hi fi people use the term as well, even when talking only about stereo speakers. I guess the same effect is available but not to the same degree perhaps.

Since studio monitors are super directional, I definitely don't get a 360 soundstage when I personally listen to them.

Maybe it's not the same with dipole-style speakers (magnepan and the like).